Garden Grove school to be renamed after Mexican parents who fought segregation
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Turning a page on its own history, the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education voted this week to rename Rosita Elementary in Santa Ana in honor of the late Frank and Irene Palomino.
Back in 1945, the Palominos took a stand against segregated schools as one of five plaintiff families in the landmark Mendez, et al v. Westminster School District of Orange County, et al civil rights case.
“This is the first major recognition that the Palominos have received from Garden Grove Unified School District,” said Andrew Palomino, Frank and Irene’s grandson. “In 80 years, our family has never been honored in this way.”
The idea to rename Rosita Elementary began two years ago when Trustee Walter Muñeton read a Los Angeles Times column about an old federal courthouse in downtown L.A. being rechristened after Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, the lead plaintiff family in the historic case.
The effort to name the federal courthouse in L.A. after the Mendez family seems like the type of feel-good story this country needs more of these days. So who on earth could be opposed to it?
Muñeton reached out to Andrew Palomino, who met with Supt. Gabriela Mafi soon after and shared his family’s history in relation to the case.
It started in 1941, when the Palominos moved to Santa Ana and sought to enroll their children in a good public school.
Frank Palomino testified during the trial that a Garden Grove School District official told him that since his son and daughter were Mexican, they had to attend Hoover School, a so-called “Mexican” school, and could not enroll in Lincoln School, where white students attended, until the sixth grade.
“Being in this country, I want to raise them as [good Americans], if they give us a chance,” he testified.
The Palominos sent their son Arthur to John C. Fremont Elementary, a Mexican school in Santa Ana, while enrolling their daughter Sally at a private Catholic school, instead.
Four years later, they took the school district to court as part of the class-action lawsuit that represented 5,000 Mexican American students and served as a precursor to the federal Brown v. Board of Education case.
“Renaming this school in honor of Frank and Irene Palomino is more than just changing the name on a building,” Muñeton said during Tuesday’s school board meeting. “There’s an opportunity to teach future generations about the power of courage, community and standing up for what is right.”
The school board’s unanimous vote officially renames Rosita Elementary, a school site near where the Palominos had lived, as of July 1 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony planned. It follows in the footsteps of the Santa Ana Unified School District’s decision last year to rename John C. Fremont Elementary in honor of William and Virginia Guzman, another plaintiff family.
For David-James Gonzales, author of “Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California,” the renewed attention on the other families in the case is a welcomed development, especially as Garden Grove played a key role.
An appellate court upheld a ruling against Mexican schools 75 years ago. The pandemic roots of school segregation in Santa Ana remain forgotten.
“The testimony of Garden Grove School District Supt. James Kent is crucial to the case,” he said. “He had used demeaning language. He referred to Mexicans as ‘dirty’ and claimed they were not culturally, socially and intellectually equal to white children. That helped sway the judge that segregation was really about racial discrimination.”
After Judge Paul J. McCormick sided with the plaintiffs in 1946, Garden Grove School District refused to integrate its schools while appealing the decision. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately upheld the lower court’s ruling that segregation violated state law.
Almost 80 years later, the relatives of the Lorenzo Ramirez and Guzman families joined with the extended Palomino family — who all called themselves the “et als” — to celebrate the school renaming and the history behind it. They gathered for group photos with trustees after the vote.
It will be the first school renaming in the district in over 40 years.
Muñeton is also in conversation with Santa Ana Councilmember Thai Viet Phan about the possibility of the city renaming Rosita Park, which is next to the school.
For Andrew Palomino, the forthcoming Frank and Irene Palomino Elementary school comes full-circle as three generations of Palomino children attended Rosita Elementary.
“They never expected any type of recognition,” he said of his grandparents. “They were doing what was right for their children and the community, and in fact they never even told us grandchildren about this case. Now people who walk into the school will learn the history of the families in this very community who helped change the course of American history and fought for civil rights.”
